Who are the candidates for the Presidency in the 2021 Nicaraguan elections?

Five candidates will contest the Head of State of Nicaragua to the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, who starts as the favorite for his fifth and fourth consecutive terms, amid the arrest of seven aspiring opposition presidential candidates who were emerging as his main rivals.

Those absent from next Sunday’s election appointment are Cristiana Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Félix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, Miguel Mora, Medardo Mairena and Noel Vidaurre, who are in prison, accused of “treason”.

Cristiana Chamorro, daughter of former President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1997) -who defeated Ortega at the polls in 1990- was the opposition figure most likely to win the elections, according to polls.

These are the candidates who will compete for the Presidency of Ortega, a former guerrilla fighter about to turn 76 who returned to power in 2007 after coordinating a Governing Board from 1979 to 1985 and presiding over the country for the first time from 1985 to 1990.

WALTER ESPINOZA

Deputy Walter Espinoza is the candidate for the Presidency of Nicaragua for the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC).

He replaced the tourist businessman Milton Arcia, who resigned his candidacy after the PLC asked the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), controlled by the Sandinistas, to remove from the election process the alliance Ciudadanos por la Libertad (CxL), the main opposition , for allegedly violating the Electoral Law and other laws, as indeed happened.

Born in Managua in 1979, Espinoza was a candidate for deputy in the 2006 general elections and did not win.

In the 2012 municipal elections, he was elected as a Managua councilor and a deputy in the 2016 national elections.

His promotion within the PLC is linked to the president of that party, the also deputy María Haydée Osuna.

He studied Tourism and Hotel Administration and is married to Lissette Murillo, with whom he has three children.

GUILLERMO OSORNO

Deputy and Reverend Guillermo Osorno is the presidential candidate for the Nicaraguan Christian Way (CCN) party.

In the last general elections of 2016, he was elected deputy to the Central American Parliament (Parlacen) by an alliance led by the Sandinistas.

He was a candidate for the Presidency in the 1996 elections, in which he obtained 4.1% of the votes, and by Electoral Law, he held a seat in the National Assembly for the period 1997-2002.

In the following electoral processes, he allied himself with an alliance headed by the PLC and was reelected deputy for the periods 2002-2007 and 2007-2012.

In the national elections of 2011 and 2016, he joined the Nicaragua Triunfa Alliance, which was headed by the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), and ran as a candidate for deputy before Parlacen, where he was elected both times.

The reverend is a business administrator and legal representative of CCN and has received criticism, among others, for registering his son, Abraham Osorno, as a candidate for deputy.

MARCELO MONTIEL

Lawyer Marcelo Montiel, 49, is the presidential candidate of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN) party, a group known to collaborate with the Sandinistas, which he denies.

He was a candidate for deputy in the 2011 general elections and did not win.

“They cannot call me a collaborator or a strider (ally) because I am clean,” says Montiel, for whom in Nicaragua, more than a dictatorship, what exists is a “concentration of powers.”

“What exists here is a concentration of power, and we see that, in practice, all powers are subject to Mr. Ortega,” he explains.

GERSON GUTIÉRREZ GASPARÍN

Gerson Gutiérrez Gasparín, 29, is the youngest presidential candidate among the six contenders. Compete for the Alliance for the Republic party (Apre).

He is a lawyer and notary public, has a master’s degree in Criminal Law and says that he can become a better president than the Salvadoran Nayib Bukele.

He is originally from a rural community in the department of Matagalpa, in northern Nicaragua, and since he was 14 years old he has lived in the capital, where he finished his high school and university studies.

Speaking to Efe, he criticized the international community for questioning the Nicaraguan electoral process.

“The big problem with our valued friends in the international community is that they only listen to a part of certain so-called opposition groups and, by listening to only a part, they have a biased concept or version,” he says.

He points to the growing migration of Nicaraguans as one of the country’s main problems.

Three sisters compete as candidates for deputies for their party.

MAURICIO ORÚE

Mauricio Orue, 53, is the presidential candidate for the Independent Liberal Party (PLI), although he is currently a deputy for the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN).

He is an evangelical pastor, lawyer and clinical psychologist and is noted as a collaborator and ally of the Sandinistas in Parliament, where he votes together with them.

In May 2017, he was accused of financial fraud by the Evangelical University of Nicaragua, which had an agreement with the Central American Institute of Higher Studies (ICES), to which Orue belongs, a complaint that was unsuccessful.

The PLI presidential candidate has asked the international community not to ignore the elections.